Shiohi no tsuto 潮干のつと

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Commentary by Julie Nelson Davis

Posted September 30, 2015

Shiohi no tsuto, or Gifts of the Ebb-tide, is regarded now as one of the most beautiful kyōka poetry albums produced in eighteenth-century Japan. Designed as a luxury work for a poetry group, the book features high-quality, technically superior printing effects, signaling the intention of its producers to commemorate the achievements of the poets. In the preface Akera Kankō, who compiled the poems, described the outing that inspired these verses. “In the third month, when the weather was fine, we all boarded a boat and rode on the open sea to Sode-ga-ura, the Bay of Sleeves, to gather seaweed and seashells on the beach at ebb tide.” [1] Kankō uses a variety of puns and literary allusions to recount the day that the poets spent composing poetry and drinking wine, their verses gathered here “like a collection of seaweed and shells.” [2]

Publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō produced the volume on behalf of the Yaegoro poetry group, with Kitagawa Utamaro engaged to design the illustrations. The volume opens with a view of Shinagawa Bay at ebb tide showing people arranged in groups of two or three enjoying the pleasant spring day. The poem above, by a certain Yomibito Shirazu (a name that means “author unknown”), has been translated as “Hoping to pick up a shell like the one used as a sake cup at the ‘Welling-Tide’ Inn, we stroll along the strand stretching out at ebb tide” (浮むせの/貝の杯/ひらわむと/しおひのかたに/かかりてぞゆく). [3] The sky and receding waves were originally printed in light blue; the pattern of the waves also featured blind embossing. Printed in dayflower blue, these areas of sea and sky are now faded to beige tones, as so often occurs with this extremely delicate and fugitive colorant.

Six openings feature studies of shells as if dispersed by the tide across the plane of the pages. The poems above match each shell type, and the calligraphy is likewise treated in a similar scattered effect. In the final image, a group of women in a luxurious room play a shell-matching game. Here, the delicate dayflower blue pigment remains visible in the robe of the woman who enters the scene on the left. The book closes with a commentary signed “written by Chieda” upon the request of the Yaegaro poetry group, and this signature indicates that it is Chieda’s calligraphy featured throughout the volume.

Several impressions of this title are known. The Pulverer copy is thought to represent the earliest printing since it features gold leaf and gold sand on the standing screen in the final shell-matching scene. The next printing features a purple wave pattern that decorates the top of the pages depicting the shell arrangements. Subsequent printings include brass filings sprinkled on the shell pages.

For a digital presentation of this title featuring translations of all the poems and a commentary by John T. Carpenter, see the Fitzwilliam Museum website: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/utamaro/start.html

Copies held in the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Diet Library, and the New York Public Library, among other collections, can also be viewed online. For a facsimile version, see Utamaro by Cholley et al. cited below.

Selected readings:

Asano Shūgō and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun; London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1995).

Jean Cholley, Dominique Morcelon, Junko Miura, and Elisabeth Lemirre, Utamaro: Paysages de neige, La lune folle, A marée basse (Arles: Éditions Philippe Picquier, 2006).

Roger Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan (Seattle and New York: University of Washington Press and New York Public Library, 2006).

Suzuki Toshiyuki 鈴木俊幸, Tsutaya Jūzaburō 『蔦屋重三郎』 , vol. 9 of Kinsei bungaku kenkyū sōsho 近世文学研究叢書 (Tokyo: Wakakusa shobō, 1998).

Copies in other collections:

British Museum, London

Chiba City Museum of Art

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge, MA

Keiō University

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin

National Diet Library

New York Public Library

Ōta Memorial Museum of Art

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Tōyō Bunko, Tokyo

[1] Translated by John T. Carpenter, presented in the online exhibition of Utamaro kyōka books at the Fitzwilliam Museum: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/utamaro/start.html (accessed July 21, 2015).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid. As Carpenter explains, the inn was renowned for the “welling-tide,” a sake cup made of abalone shell. Located in Osaka, the inn and its cup were the subject of poems by Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), Yosa Buson (1716–1783), and others.